Independent outs - critical too me Happy with MPC live 2

I was debated whether to get the MPC live 2 or the new Maschine +. The Maschine + only has two outputs.
The MPC live 2 has 8 independent outputs.
So I have a session today, and it was easy to send the toms to its own outputs. What a relief. That way I use my Allen & Heath GS3000 mixer to handle some of the processing, levels on the toms, etc.
I understand there are workarounds in these units.
But having independent outs is a must for me. I am glad I have the MPC Live 2.
It had a slow learning curve for me - which is mainly due to me
But it is worth it.

Haha, I just love the fact you made a thread out of excitement.

Keep it up buddy!

I thought it was 6 outs. But either way, yeah. I'm just about to reinstall my Focusrite 428 to handle the extra 4 outs from the Live 1.

The MACHINE + can recognized class compliant audio interfaces using USB. So if you connect an audio interface to it, the MASCHINE+ can use that's interfaces i/o.

A lot of times people posts complaints. So I thought it was time to post a "praise!" It may help someone else's purchasing decision. Thank you!

Cases wrote:Haha, I just love the fact you made a thread out of excitement.

Keep it up buddy!

Just wanted to say I had the Maschine Plus for 3 weeks. It's ok and will be pretty good in 2 years. I sent it back and stuck with MPC Live. Much better system in my opinion. I got lured in really by the fact that I could start to finish a beat on Maschine. In the end that really doesn't matter that much.

People talk about the build quality of Maschine plus but I felt like the buttons were cheap compared to the rubberized buttons on MPC Live.

People talk about sounds, well most of the good sounds are sampled on Maschine (not even from Massive or other standalone VST). You can get literally just buy the Maschine expansion and make keygroups from the sounds(most are actually one shots). Also certain expansion sounds are on Sounds.com like Lockdown grind.

Workflow is nice since you can actually finish a song on the Maschine, but that being said I had to export stems to daw to actually finish. Just easier adding drops and cut outs in a DAW.

Editing MIDI is really bad on Maschine obviously. I use my MPC Live as the center piece to tracking hardware and making beats from scratch(not loops or samples) so I need to at least be able to edit MIDI somewhat.

One thing that is better on Maschine are effects. That's honestly what makes the sounds sound better. Again not super important since I export and track out in DAW.

@Drew, what is the difference for you why you think it's difficult to finish songs on the Live, but you see being able to do it on Machine+? Just curious!

NearTao wrote:@Drew, what is the difference for you why you think it's difficult to finish songs on the Live, but you see being able to do it on Machine+? Just curious!

Good question. 2 things.

1. Patterns work very different. So in MPC you have to have a few sequences for a song, but they each contained copied patterns. For instance I have a piano pattern, drum pattern and bass pattern. If I want to add a different piano pattern for the chorus but drum and bass stay the same, I have to copy all that to a new sequence. If I change the way the drums are played I have to fix that in every sequence. You can see how that can be tedious. In Maschine you can have any combination of patterns playing at the same time in a scene. Then make a bunch of scenes easily(piano just playing, then drums come in, then bass comes in). You can kind of do this with track mute in MPC..... Then you can create a song in a timeline view based off all those scenes. But that's not really the end of it. You can now use clips to create one off patterns in the timeline view. Can be automation in there or just a different riff. Also I do a lot of hardware sequencing and audio tracks are kind of nerfed in MPC so you can't mute those separately. Audio tracks are handled better in Maschine.

2. Effects are better to finalize track with it.

Recently I've been doing single sequence workflow in MPC. So I do an 8 bar loop (for chorus or whatever), then just duplicate that out in the sequence and change different parts. It's really easy to do in mpc because you can change the start and end points of the loop. You still have the issue: If the piano riff you originally played isn't quite right you have to change it through the entire sequence. After that I just export individual tracks out and finish in DAW

Even though I don't like to hit the DAW, it has much better effects (than even Maschine), and it's so easy to arrange and add automation. I also don't mind being in two separate train of thought. On MPC its' about creating the loop. Then you move to DAW it's about creating a song. Kind of how Ableton has two separate views. They mean very different things.

Ah I got you... I have never touched Maschine, so wasn't familiar with the workflow, and I suppose I was just assuming it was similar in some way to the MPC. So, I was definitely wrong on that count!

I am however super familiar with Ableton... been a user since 1.1, so I get your points there, and I get your points on sequences. I've built up some workflow habits to work around the track/sequence and then needing to make changes issues... but they are just that, workflow changes I have made myself to make my life easier to complete songs in the MPC. When I want to get into specific spaces though, yeah, I just go for Ableton Live because managing clips, doing micro edits, parameter sweeps or glitches, are all quite a bit easier in the DAW.

Thanks for sharing!

Drew Hamlett wrote:Just wanted to say I had the Maschine Plus for 3 weeks. It's ok and will be pretty good in 2 years. I sent it back and stuck with MPC Live. Much better system in my opinion. I got lured in really by the fact that I could start to finish a beat on Maschine. In the end that really doesn't matter that much.

People talk about the build quality of Maschine plus but I felt like the buttons were cheap compared to the rubberized buttons on MPC Live.

People talk about sounds, well most of the good sounds are sampled on Maschine (not even from Massive or other standalone VST). You can get literally just buy the Maschine expansion and make keygroups from the sounds(most are actually one shots). Also certain expansion sounds are on Sounds.com like Lockdown grind.

Workflow is nice since you can actually finish a song on the Maschine, but that being said I had to export stems to daw to actually finish. Just easier adding drops and cut outs in a DAW.

Editing MIDI is really bad on Maschine obviously. I use my MPC Live as the center piece to tracking hardware and making beats from scratch(not loops or samples) so I need to at least be able to edit MIDI somewhat.

One thing that is better on Maschine are effects. That's honestly what makes the sounds sound better. Again not super important since I export and track out in DAW.

I’m glad I read this. I looked at the MASCHINE+ too and I felt like my MPC Live MK1 and even the MPC One was a much better bargain. Thanks for your input!